Now, gods, stand up for Hufflepuffs!
by peppermint.raichu
Summary: An accurate account of the founding of Hogwarts, straight from Helga Hufflepuff's diary. Which founder sucks their thumb? Whose idea was it to make the school a castle? And why exactly should you never tickle a sleeping dragon?
1. Chapter 1

Dear Diary,

I have begun this journal in order keep an accurate account of the founding of my school.

That, and I feel that I may need an outlet to vent my frustration before I end up killing one of them.

They're honestly not, well, not all bad. Even if Salazar thought it would be good fun to try to poison Godric's mead, causing that idiot to explode our table, as well as half of the small inn. Not that any of this bothered Rowena. She showed up half an hour late, staring at the sky, and mumbling something about Nargles. Luckily, once she stumbled in, Salazar and I had already repaired Godric's damage, erased the incident from the Muggles' minds, and sentenced Godric to a time out in the corner with no more mead. It is truly a bleak future for our kind if these truly are the brightest minds of the age.

Not that they aren't talented, by any means. Salazar does have a knack for potions, and his Legilimens matches even my own. Not that he had any idea I poses powers like that, of course. I have easily managed to keep my mind suitably blank, occasionally giving Salazar a pie recipe when he decides to prod around. Godric is all brawn and auburn hair with hardly any brains it seems. His dueling skills could wipe out half the country, and more than once I've already had to confiscate his wand to keep him from doing just that. Lastly, there is poor Rowena, tragically beautiful and about as focused as an epileptic puppy. Her mind is wickedly sharp, when she decides to pay the real world any heed.

Overall, I feel less like a witch and more like a nanny these days.

First, there was the issue of where to put the school. Each one wanted it where they had grown up, even though there really was no place more suitable than up north. Up north in a particular spot I had already picked out. A lovely and secluded spot nestled between a forest and a lake, the perfect spot for a cozy, magical retreat. Luckily, Rowena decided to tune in at that moment, and calmed the boys with the bat of an eyelash. So, north it is.

I keep telling Rowena she needs to eat more, the tiny thing, but she seems to forget five seconds after I've told her.

We did manage to have a lovely slice of pumpkin pie, my personal favorite, while the boys constructed the school. They had offered to take the task upon themselves as a way to impress Miss Rowena, and I was happy to oblige them. However, she did not even so much as look their way as they worked, as she was so enthralled in some new plant she had discovered. Salazar and Godric had no idea, and continued with their construction pissing contest, so that what had been described as a small and cozy retreat was suddenly a castle.

A castle.

They built a castle in the middle of nowhere, complete with turrets and towers and who knows what else!

I had to hex them before they would stop. I'm just glad I got to them before they decided to add a moat. We're trying to be discrete, I reminded them, and a castle is anything but! The protection charms that a castle would need would be horridly hard, and given that there were only an estimated thousand wizards in Britain (with numbers growing smaller each day, I might add, due to ignorant and fire-prone Muggles) we certainly had no need for a castle!

And then Rowena glided over, looking at the castle and calling it, "Lovely." That also was enough for the boys to feel proud of themselves, and they blushed furiously once I took the petrifying hex off of them. At least Rowena is too far away most of the time to notice their advances. I don't know what would happen if any of them got any more distracted, or if she actually decided to return their affection.

-Helga

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. I perfected the pumpkin juice charm earlier in the week. As pumpkins are the vegetable I'm best with, it's so nice to have a way to enjoy them in liquid form as well as in pie, pasta, casserole, and so on. Small victories are what keep me sane.

Small victories.


	2. Chapter 2

Dear Diary,

Another problem about castles: they're impossible to furnish.

Luckily, Salazar (without my permission, I might add) took it upon himself to clear a large section of the forest for some sort of sporting arena. The sport, from what I have gathered, is a perfect waste of magic and good brooms, as well as incredibly violent. That comment did nothing to deter Salazar, who simply used it as a way to show off his scars to Rowena. And now, because of that, Godric is now determined to learn how to play. The lucky part comes from all the wood clearing that part of the forest has provided, which we all quickly converted into chairs, bed frames, bookshelves, and tables for the large dining hall.

Another thing they did without my permission was to choose their own rooms. Well, Godric and Salazar did. Godric accidentally blew a hole in a wall and decided, instead of fixing it, to connect it to a nearby tower. He then decided he wanted to live in that stupid hole. Salazar, slightly more tactful, did not blow up a wall. He instead tried to get as far from Godric as possible, and then added a magic wall in the dungeons. I would have told him that I worried about his health, being down in the dank dungeons, but he would not have listened.

On that note, what on earth possessed those men to add dungeons to a school for children? Idiots! Maybe it was a good thing Salazar had taken them over.

At first I had no idea where Rowena was sleeping. That is, until I realized she was simply curling up in what was quickly turning into a library. She had been spending most of her time converting all the things in her head to books. By the time I found her, she was nearly drowned in ink and hadn't eaten all day. I remedied both as quickly as I could, before Godric stole her away talking about how she should have her room in a tower, just like him. She agreed, and Godric made sure that Salazar saw all of it.

While the boys' antics are annoying, the fact that Rowena still seems oblivious to them comforts me.

During dinner tonight, the idea of sorting our prospective students came up. I made sure to tell them I was against it. The idea of sorting eleven year olds (eleven, we all agreed, was a good age for schooling to start. By then, there was really nothing more they could learn away from this school, and could be decently trusted with a wand) was laughable. Salazar went on and on about it, and I used the opportunity to probe his mind.

What I discovered was that by eleven, Salazar still had not stopped wetting the bed. That ended at age thirteen. I then went to Godric. His childhood surprised me, and so his agreement on the idea was fair. Rowena… Well Rowena still sucks her thumb and cannot stay present for an entire conversation.

And yet the idea that the children would be sorted at all, into groups referring to the four of us, made it clear that this idea, this school, was no longer solely mine. I must admit, I felt a little betrayed. So I had changed the subject.

"Shouldn't we decide what to name the school?" I asked, finishing off a second piece of apple crumble. "Before we begin thinking about what to do with students we do not even have."

That sparked a horrible debate. Godric wanted the place named after his hometown, Godric's Hollow, while Salazar wanted the school to be named whatever school translated to in Parsletongue.

Rowena, who had been poking her pudding with her spoon and mumbling at it, finally looked up at the rest of us. "Hogwarts is a good name," she asserted, before turning back to the pudding.

"That's not a real word," I countered, quick to shoot it down.

"I like it!" Godric said, smiling heartily at the still distracted Rowena.

Salazar scowled. "Well I like it more!"

What was once a cozy retreat is now a castle monstrosity named Hogwarts. My small victory this time is that none of them know where I sleep at night. We have some barrels near the kitchen, now empty, so no one even thinks to look around them. My personal cozy retreat, with low ceilings and curved windows, is just beyond that.

Some of us don't need flashy towers to be happy.

-Helga


	3. Chapter 3

Dear Diary,

The closer we get to opening, the more people come to visit.

Being the most well spoken and level headed, I deal with the visitors and make sure that the other three are either distracted or hexed while they visit. Some are witches and wizards looking for teaching positions, as well as safety from Muggle persecution. The others are prospective parents, interested in the welfare of their children, and rightly so. Bringing together mostly untrained witches and wizards for the sole purpose of making them more powerful does sound dangerous.

Not as dangerous, however, as the parents and the colorful death threats they described if anything were to happen to their children.

In between the death threats, there were gifts. Some are in good faith, to show confidence in the school. Some are fairly obvious bribes, as if that will ensure their child does better in the classes we have yet to fully organize. The saddest of all are the parents who bring in family heirlooms, hoping they will be safer in this bastion of magic then they are in the world of Muggles. It breaks my heart, but I accept them all the same, keeping a list of who gives what. Now our once sparse castle has suits of armor, plush rugs, nice china, new books, and even portraits for the walls.

I was hanging one portrait yesterday, when the staircase I was on moved.

I screamed, caught off guard, and ended up outside the library. Hearing my cry, Rowena came out, covered in ink, and asked what was wrong.

"The staircase moved!" I told her, catching my breath.

Rowena just laughed. "I know," she informed me. "I enchanted them to do that."

I swear my jaw hit the floor at hearing that. "Why in the world would you do something like that?"

To my question, Rowena simply shrugged and responded, "It's more fun this way. I enjoy not knowing where I'm going." And then she bounced back into the library while I waited for the staircase to move back.

The only problematic gift was the house elves. They had great potential, I saw immediately, especially with their penchant for cooking. And after a few kind words and recipes, they cheered up considerably. It was only after I had gotten the three of them settled in that Godric pulled me over to talk about it. I should have seen it coming, from the time I looked into his mind over dessert. He had been an indentured servant before he found out he had magic, and the experience had scarred him. He did not like the idea of slaves.

The more sober side of the wild man softened me. We made an agreement to make the school a haven for the elves. They would still work, but no one would beat them like they were used to. And while it was not wholly appealing to Godric, he agreed, and that was that. An hour later, he was in a fist fight with Salazar over the rules of their stupid sport, and had presumably forgotten about the whole issue.

The elves, however, are not the only magical creatures to make their presence known. The more magic the four of us do in the castle, the more we attract them. What was once a perfectly normal forest now teems with magical beasts. I have spotted at least one herd of centaurs, telltale signs of unicorns, and Salazar swears he once saw merpoeple in the lake. Once again, my cozy retreat has grown beyond what I had ever expected.

And then over dinner tonight, the issue of sorting came up. We all finally agreed to split the students into four groups, one for each of us, if only to make them easier to manage. I firmly set my foot down and set it so that the four groups, the four houses, would be nothing more than each of our surnames, respectively.

"I want all the brave students!" Godric had said, toasting himself with this umpteenth goblet of mead for the evening. "And my mascot will be a lion. A talking lion! I made a hat talk, so I lion shouldn't be so hard. It will sleep in my bed and I will take it on walks and feed it and everything."

I had to take the mead away from him at that point. A lion, around children? Not likely. It did, however, lead to a conversation and decisions about a school crest, house colors, and house mascots. Salazar (predictably) chose a snake as a mascot, and green and silver as colors. Godric, having to do everything Salazar didn't, chose red and gold to go with the lion he would not be keeping in his bed. Lastly, there was Rowena.

"I want blue," she had said, smiling. "And an eagle."

I almost choked on my pumpkin juice at that. "Rowena, dear, are you sure you would not prefer to have a raven as your mascot?"

She just shook her pale head at me. "No, no. An eagle will do quite nicely."

So there you have it: a lion, a snake, and an eagle, with no common sense between them. I personally chose a badger, as well as yellow and black. Strong and bold colors, as well as a mascot that is docile, yet fierce when provoked—a perfect balance. Nothing too flashy, and nothing obscure. A logical choice.

-Helga

Note: A school motto of sorts has been tacked on to our crest. I did it without telling them, and yet none of them seem to mind. 'Never tickle a sleeping dragon.' Some good, sound advice for the brainless trio, if they ever bother to read it.


	4. Chapter 4

Dear Diary,

My apologies, old friend. I quite forgot I was keeping you.

If my memory serves me, and it usually does, it's been nearly a decade since I last wrote anything. So much for keeping an accurate account of the school's founding. I really should not have packed you away with my holiday apparel. My winter robes have been out of fashion for quite some time.

We've already had our first graduating class. In fact, we've had quite a few graduating classes. This year's, however, was markedly different. There were two empty seats at the high table during the leaving feast, and a strong silent over the room come to be known as the Great Hall.

It had all happened so suddenly, that I had to look at the memory in a pensive before even I could fully understand what exactly had happened, and why. Now, after so many views, it is engraved in my memory like a brand. Sharing it is the least I can do for you, after forgetting you in my trunk for so many years, and depriving you of so many memories.

It was a warm, late April evening, and there were windows in our room that night. The special room was created by the four of us, to be hard to access and to provide us with whatever we needed once inside it. Originally it was attempted simply because Rowena had wanted to see if it could be done, and we kept it up as a sort of founders (as we have come to be known) retreat. As usual, Rowena sat on the end of the settee with her nose in a book, I was on the other end pruning a new species of plant recently imported from the Far East, and the boys were playing chess across the small room.

The conversation started as nothing more than a whisper. But then it grew louder and louder, until the boys were shouting and the chess game was on the floor.

"I've had it with your theories!" Godric roared, drawing both my and Rowena's attention.

Salazar glared at him with his grey eyes. "You just don't like to admit you're wrong, Gryffindor. They're weaker and they'll never be as good as us!" At this point Godric tried to interrupt, face red, but Salazar would not let him. "They're filth, all of them, rolling around in the muck and grime with those beasts. It's disgusting, and I cannot stand it anymore."

It is at this point Salazar looked at me, and I froze as if he just hit me with a spell.

"Isn't that right, Helga? You said yourself this was supposed to be a haven, to keep out the Muggles and to preserve magic."

I nodded, unsure of what he's really talking about, and it hurt my neck.

"See! They must all be eliminated. Burned! Drowned in the lake! Food for the werewolves! Just as long as they are gone and out of this school."

The violence shook me, and I stood. "What exactly are you talking about, Salazar?"

He laughs, and it frightens me. "Mudbloods, of course!"

I tilt my head, my neck still sore, like a puppy that does not understand a new command. "Excuse me?"

"My apologies, Helga. Sometimes I forget we are not all as equally bright."

My fists clench on the shears in my hands, but I let it go.

"It is a new term, common in new mainland philosophy." At this point, he looked over at Rowena, whose sapphire gaze was once again fixed in her book. "I have been reading, quite a bit as of late. A Mudblood, simply put, is a despicable witch or wizard born of one or two Muggle parents, thus marking them as unfit to study magic. Or exist, really."

My breathing quickened. "You want to get rid of students with Muggle parents?" It made no sense then, and it still doesn't. With the small amount of witches and wizards the world over, we all would have died out long ago if not for interbreeding with Muggles. I know this, and I also know that at least two thirds of the school are 'Mudbloods,' as Salazar would call them.

He threw his arms in the air. "Yes! I knew you would understand, Helga."

A wet noise interrupted us.

Six out of the eight eyes in the room all turned to look at Rowena. Bright, round tears covered her cheeks, and some had even fallen into her book, smudging the ink. I sat down my shears, and put a hand on her shoulder. She did not even look at me. Instead, she kept her blue eye cast down on the book.

It was Godric who spoke next, always the bold one. "Rowena? Are you okay?"

She gulped. I could feel her trembling under my hand.

"My parents are both Muggles."

To that, Salazar said nothing. He just stormed out of the room, while the room itself produced a pile of handkerchiefs next to Rowena.

We never saw him again.

-Helga

Note: It's a fortnight later. Rowena told Godric and I that she is pregnant. No one is talking about it.


End file.
